Rent Bond Street (1948)

Snitches in Time - Bond Street review by CH

Time was when the portmanteau film could command an audience which appreciated that, done well, this amounted to a full meal rather than snacking at a tapas. Perhaps the supreme instance was Dead of Night, although there could be a case for Kind Hearts and Coronets being a turn upon such a set-up, as was, decades later., Jack Rosenthal's The Chain. With Bond Street, a number of writers came together, commissioned to provide the separate stories behind the dress, pearl, veil and flowers acquired in the eponymous thoroughfare for a bride's trousseau.

And so we are regaled by a great series of characters, the stories not overlapping. In the first, a haughty woman insists that her dress be altered forthwith so that she can attend what is taken to be a cocktail party that evening. Trouble is, the seamstress (Kathleen Harrison) deputed to do the work is in such a rage (anxious to be at the hospital for her teenage daughter's troubled pregnancy) that she rips the dress. Naturally the customer is livid, but there is a twist which restores faith in humanity. Perhaps this section with its de facto sweatshop atmosphere behind that fine façade is the film's early peak. Strange, though, that the toilers at their sewing machines all speak with the clipped accent of their betters.

Similarly, Ronald Howard, a button salesman, speaks with such an accent - but he is a former fighter pilot, an officer down on his luck, so much so that he has ripped the trousers of his only suit, necessary dress in which to ply his trade. He is so glad at Patricia Plunkett's handiwork at a humble invisible mender's that he invites her to lunch, unaware that she is trying to disentangle herself from a low-lifer (Kenneth Griffin) who is trying to pull off a theft. Crime returns, with murder, in the section where a murderer hides at in the small flat occupied by a prostitute (a splendid Jean Kent). Torrid stuff, big brass bed and all, the segment that - of the quartet - one could envisage as a full-length film. As for the wedding, one could do without this farcical turn which requires the father of the bride to woo, and send home, the woman who turns up from Denmark (she helped his son escape after wartime capture). There is a crass tone to this, though one relishes the supercilious cameo by hard-pressed travel agent Colin Gordon. Throughout one can happily spot small parts by those who became better known - and it sits alongside the other work by one of those who handled an episode: Terence Rattigan.

Bond Street - Bond Street review by LJ

This is an anthology story, consisting of four separate stories that are all connected to the preparation of a wedding or rather items purchased for the wedding on Bond Street. Unfortunately three out of four of the stories are dull.